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Misc

Thursday, January 10, 2008

As I've been reading Genesis it continues to amaze me how bad things can get, how wicked our hearts are my heart is. Today as I was changing laundry loads I was mulling over these things, and it occurred to me that God let His people go without the Law for quite some time. Really when you think about it, they didn't get the law for at least a couple thousand years (I'm guessing). Why?

Maybe, and I could be wrong, God didn't give them the Law right away for the specific purpose of displaying how crazy things can get when we toss the rule book out the window. As I've mentioned before, we truly see the wickedness of man very quickly after the Fall. Perhaps God withheld the Law so that we would really see and understand our own wickedness? Then when He finally gives the Law He knows nobody will ever be able to live it perfectly. He shows us our wickedness in the pre-Law period, shows us we cannot live righteously in our own efforts in the pre-Christ period. Generations of people grew up in the law, and many of them thought their works and apparent adherence to it would make them right before God. Of course they ignored the symbolism of the Law's sacrifices, they ignored their sin and attempted to stand in their own righteousness. Then in Christ God finally reveals the solution.

First we must see our wickedness, then we must understand we cannot earn a place before God based on our apparent good works, THEN we are able to see and understand the sacrifice of Christ. It is only after the first two steps that we can appreciate the tender mercies of God found in Christ.